Open Learning Network

Present: Patrick, Janet, Liam, Doug, Nick, Tina, Giota, Canan, Andreia, Kasia, Ann, Anna, Simon

Apologies: Karen, Michelle (at SXSW)

Announcements

Will use functional spec from last meeting to drive site development. Also CALRG conference call is now out, we should put in no more than two responses (or equivalent) from OLnet; deadline for abstracts is 23 April, conference 23-25 May.

We did get our year one report in ahead of the deadline. Not had feedback yet. Talked about year two but will come back to.

Updates

Nick: Working on OLnet.org with Liam, will keep people posted. Event support in Cloudworks - may be embeddable in other sites like OLnet.org; development is aimed to support both.

Giota: Chair of open collaboration track (new!) at WikiSym 10 in Gdansk 7-10 July. Deadline for abstracts/papers very soon; for panels etc is 21 March but will be pushed back. Talking to Kasia and Tina about teaching and learning in an OER context. Or like our patterns workshop. OERopoly workshop.

Andreia: Desk research/review of OER initiatives for OPAL project, mostly in the UK. First output by mid-April. Will be an interative seed process. We have a template, so other people can get involved. There is a Cloudscape where we are collating OER initiatives - please contribute! Attending workshop in Brazil next week - presenting Openlearn and Brazilian collaboration experiences. Working with Giota on P2PU research, negotiating access, aiming to start observing this Friday for six weeks. Preparing for audiomaking course for iTunes U, to disseminate OLnet research. Finalise revision of H800 (IET Masters course). Has been accepted for writing training school in Prague next month.

Kasia: Working on presentation for social learning seminar next week. Open systems research group are interested in social learning, working with people from other departments. Exchanging ideas on what social learning is. Working with Simon, opening, then four shorter presentations, including Kasia and a KMi student.

Ann: Jenny Preece is coming over in April - 8-9th/Thursday and Friday. Very short version of a fellowship. Will join with us online too. Will arrange a meeting. Want to give Jenny an overview of OLnet, and talk to people. (Simon, Patrick, Karen and Elpida won't be here. Will be back again in September for another short visit.

Anna: Michelle in Texas for final of Jetpack competition. OER Commons people - talking to them about their API, added to Jetpack. Help you opportunistically stumble across OER related to the page you're on. Also added Twitter stuff too.

Simon: Also social learning symposium next week. Technical front - opening up the PhDskills site. Currently OU-only for PhD development; will be migrated in to Cloudworks, open it up for discussion, show how you evidence it - and public. Have added Google Gadgets in to Cloudworks, can drop those in to many sites. Online Deliberation 2010 conference where reearchers and policymakers interested in online deliberation - coming to Europe - Simon running events there.

Patrick: Need to keep an eye on the commitments to open-ness we have in OLnet - our content and software needs to be open. So any OLnet resources deployment for software should be towards open-source development.

Anna: Working on OERopoly game, initial cards around OER projects, might be useful for what Andreia is doing. Cards describing 30 projects. Thinking to test it at CALRG conference, and/or WikiSym. Will playtest for first time next week - join in and try it!

Tina: Engin had an abstract in to the AECT conference in California on his research, working with him. Working on JISC and OER10 conferences.

Liam: Worked funny hours last week because at an online event on US time on mobiles in education. Moving to mobile web applications rather than developing for specific phones. OU's Facebook presence is being revived, Martin Bean very keen on it. May mean some changes in working arrangements, since Liam developed those Facebook apps.

OER 10

Is coming around a week on Monday. Attending: Giota, Andreia, Karen, Eileen, Patrick - plus Engin and Marilo.

Chris Pegler has organised a SCORE session with John Naughton just after the conference. There are up to three places available. If three of us attend for an hour, the others will need to have coffee.

Publicity and website

Intend to revive leaflets - new branding and text. Patrick passed round some OU Leardning Design Initiative publicity as an example. Please think about producing a small chunk of text/images around your work so we can produce a new and better leaflet. Also needs to be available on the website.

Year 2 planning

 There is a lot going on, we need to track it better (was clear in the year one reporting process). In parallel, IET and the OU is putting in place some project planning tools. Patrick circulated IET's work planning template. We need people to plan, so we know what the monthly activity pattern will be, and have a clearer view of our capacity to take on new work. Karen will lead to provide more clarity here, to give us a view on which projects are progressing. Also launched last week was a load of planning templates from OU Project Management (OUPM) [OU-only]. Would help to join up with all the project reporting and planning for the various fundings streams we have. Have done a lot of this for some specific things (e.g. P2PU), but not brought together. A collation exercise to give a strategic overview.

Plan is to make more of this open - within and beyond the team. We have 21 projects; some are ideas, some are real commitments with significant ongoing activity. Need to distinguish the latter and bring them out.

We have the opportunity to shape Year 2 plans - we need project descriptions as a beginning: what you're planning, outline timetable, and the likely benefits.

Forthcoming meetings

NB No researcher meeting next week 17th March - Social learning event instead. May be a tools meeting.

Week after - 24th March -  many people at OER10, so no OLnet full meeting.

Agreed to have full team meeting on 31st March. 

No meeting on 7th April (many people in US at the grantees meeting). Then OLnet research discussion meeting on the 14th April. Then back to original schedule with full team meeting on 21st April.

Janet will update all of this stuff on the OLnet.org calendar.